Mayfly Tears
by ncfan
Summary: AU. Minato was an eighteen-year-old boy, and she was an older married woman. Not happily married, but married all the same. It could never be what they wanted. Minato x Mikoto.


Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

* * *

The heat from the evening swayed in the long grasses as they puckered and billowed under the sultry breeze. The air had a hazy, light blue tinge to it.

Mikoto leaned against the post at the porch, staring out at the houses, the shops, the streets and the rose purple light gleaming around the edge of the sun, sending dark lavender fingers scattering atop the roofs.

She tipped her head back and sighed, almost forgetting the presence of her baby son inside. The laziness of the sweet early twilight swept over her and she simply drank it in.

The sound of twin footfalls alerted her; she wasn't entirely able to cast away the sudden indolence that had settled like lead deep in her bones, but she opened her heavy eyes and stared down the street.

Out of the buzzing haze, as cicadas set to a constant, humming chorus in the background, two nin appeared, a young man and a boy.

Minato's startling turquoise eyes met Mikoto's deep black ones, and her heart began to skip beats as it always did. Her lethargy chose the opportune moment to flee for its life.

The young Uchiha matriarch worked an innocuously sweet smile onto her pale, soft-featured face, folding her hands in her apron as she always did to hide the calluses and hide her self-consciousness about the tough skin.

"Hello, Mikoto," Minato greeted her courteously, beaming to make the sun seem paltry. "I've come to bring Obito home," he explained, putting a hand on the young boy's shoulder. "Is Tetsuya home?" Minato nodded to the smaller house near the main house of the Uchiha compound.

Obito grinned up at her; a blackening bruise stood out on his right cheekbone, but he ignored it, smiling jauntily. His black eyes held the shiftiness that melted away whenever he left the Uchiha compound to reveal the kind, friendly nature he had always possessed but returned the moment he stepped past the gate.

"Hi, Mikoto-obasan." Obito had stopped calling her "oneesan" the day she had married his maternal uncle two years ago; the word "obasan" still sounded strange and out of place when applied to her, a young woman.

Mikoto smiled at her nephew, then inexorably turned her eyes back to Minato. "My brother-in-law is at home. He just got back from his work at the police station."

Minato nodded, and looked down at Obito. "Go on home," he told his student gently. "I need to talk to Mikoto for a minute, okay?"

Obito departed, light footfalls soon disappearing from their ability to hear it. The haze of sunset swallowed him up, and only the slamming of a thin wire storm door indicated that he was out of hearing.

Minato stood a small distance away, his hands behind his back. He seemed to be pondering over whether or not he should look Mikoto in the eye, shaggy golden hair falling over his eyes as he did so. He opted ultimately to look her in the eye, a carefully reserved gleam shining at the back of almond-shaped eyes. "How are you, Mikoto?"

She dipped her head slightly, the shadows in her hair scattering across the surface of her skin. Her lips parted. "Well. The days have been quiet; I haven't heard from you since last week." A slight hint of reproach, or maybe just worry, entered her voice. "Haven't you gotten any of my messages?"

"Is Fugaku-san home?" Minato asked warningly, conveying the meaning of his words in the tone of his voice.

She shook her head, thick mane of blue-black hair falling across her face in silken folds; Minato licked his dry lips. "No. He's away on a mission; he won't be back for another month."

"Ah." For some reason, Minato seemed to sound like he had a garrote around his neck, pulling tighter and tighter. "I see."

Mikoto smiled, and held a hand out to him silently. To Minato, she seemed a far-off spirit beckoning a mortal on to strange lands beyond the sea.

Almost trembling, heart thudding against the firm bone of his ribs, he took her much-smaller hand, feeling the contours meld against his skin. Her skin was warm.

.

The day was almost impossibly hot; heat drove villagers to walk around in their lightest, thinnest clothes, women in camisoles, men bare-chested or in light, sleeveless white cotton shirts, sweating buckets and seeking cooler places. The sky was so light a shade of blue as to seem almost white, the sun a brilliant, eye-catching yellow like the petals of a black-eyed Susan.

The servants in the Uchiha main household took care of Itachi when his mother was out; they said nothing to Fugaku, keeping their eyes down and their mouths shut. He was clan head only because he had married Mikoto; it was not he who commanded their ultimate loyalty. However they might have supported or disapproved it, they kept their own counsel, and Minato found reason to be immensely grateful for their discretion.

It had been a crush, at least four years long and even before then Minato could remember Uchiha Mikoto. He could still remember when she was a coltish teenager in the awkward state that he himself had just barely grown out of, when she had been all arms and legs and her shirt was pulled tight against a flat chest.

He could remember when she had bloomed into a woman, breathtaking and graceful.

He remembered who she had been before she had married Uchiha Fugaku.

Theirs was not a love match. It was a dynastic arrangement, sought because Mikoto's father had had no male heirs and a woman could not become the head of the Uchiha clan.

Her lively face settled into a stoicism that sometimes read serenity, sometimes read an empty mask. Mikoto wished only to be free again, and it was something she would never have.

As they walked down the mostly empty street, Mikoto's hand sought his own, long, slight fingers entwining in his own. Without symbols and trappings, they could just be two people traipsing hand in hand, with no reason to draw suspicion or attention of any kind to themselves.

Mikoto cupped her free hand over her forehead, shifting midnight hair over pale ivory skin. Her heart-shaped face was not the mask when with Minato, nor simply the serenity. She was more human, with a full range of feelings that came and passed like a summer thunder storm, her dark eyes softened of their faint rind of ice.

They would only exist at dawn and at twilight; they could not survive in full daylight. Minato wished it could be otherwise, but that was all they could ever be. All they ever would be.

As they stepped lazily through an empty marketplace, silent and content to remain that way, the vendors all inside in the heat, Minato resolved that however long or short a time they had together, the pain, the joy, the bittersweet longing, he would remember it, taste it, cherish it.

For now, and forever.

.

The waters of the Nakano shimmered in the late afternoon haze, a pearly shade of blue with the swirling eddies and whirlpools a foamy white. The Nakano had a softer voice than the river that rain through the heart of Konoha, a whisper instead of a shout. The oak tree on the steeper back sang to the river's tune, a companion in a duet that spoke a language no human could understand.

Mikoto took her shoes off and dipped her feet in the shockingly cold water, only letting her toes hit the water with a prim prudishness that seemed like a gesture of another woman when used by the daring kunoichi Minato knew so well. Then, enforced civilian life had changed Mikoto.

"I'm surprised more people aren't here," Mikoto remarked, pale legs swimming in the air. She caught Minato's eye and smiled, head crooked slightly. "This river is a favorite with the children of the Uchiha clan."

"I can believe it," Minato murmured.

There was no wind. The heat was a humid, muggy blanket, and Minato's breath was not enough to stir the air to a breeze.

There was silence again. They were both quiet people, content to spend their time speaking without words. Neither ever saw a real need to punctuate the quiet with conversation. There was so much that could be said with a look of the eyes, the touch of skin against skin, so much so that after a while, talking became unnecessary and all they needed to do was breathe.

"Come back with me tonight." The words were a soft command, not a request, and they brought to Minato the memory of skin, the smell of her hair and the hotness of her breath. Silently, almost helplessly, he nodded, feeling his own skin prickle as her eyes continued to search him, onyx-black and penetrating.

.

"Have you seen them?" Kushina demanded of her brother, her voice rising and cracking. "Have you?"

Arashi stared in sympathy at his twin as she folded her knees up to her chest, brooding. Long scarlet hair fell over her back.

"It'll be over when her husband comes back," Arashi assured her, though he wasn't sure. Uchiha Fugaku didn't exactly keep his young wife on a short leash; it was well-known that their relationship wasn't the best and that Fugaku wished to avoid trouble.

Kushina was not reassured, and Arashi couldn't blame her. He had no idea how Minato and Uchiha Mikoto even knew each other, more less how they had become involved. Kushina was merely upset, not jealous as Arashi had originally assumed she was. But Arashi knew deep down that Kushina didn't have much hope of ever getting Minato's attention, not at the moment anyway. Kushina was beautiful, but Mikoto was a woman, Kushina a child and Kushina didn't stand a chance.

She never had.

.

In the darkness, Mikoto caught sight of the door of her bedroom hanging ajar. Moonlight washed all the furnishments of the room a ghostly quicksilver, her hair gleaming blue.

She looked beside her. The area of the tatami mat her was empty, the sheets left pulled back and rumpled.

Bitterly, she smiled. _At least one of us has the foresight to be careful._

.

The sunlight was rusting over, the reddish tinge growing darker at ever moment. The long shadows were made of ebony, scratching against the dusty high streets of Konohagakure.

They sat on the stoop of Minato's apartment, leaning into each other, Minato's arm stretched tight across Mikoto's slight shoulder blades, half bare by a cascade of hair and the low neckline of her burgundy shirt.

"I…don't think I've left the village in two years," Mikoto murmured softly. "Not since I was married, and certainly not since my son was born. I want to go on a mission again, I want to feel that blood rush. My home, it's just a gilded cage. I feel…trapped."

Minato said nothing, his hand tightening over her shoulder.

Mikoto pulled away slightly, and looked at him. Her deep, onyx eyes were opaque, not letting in any discernment or giving out any light. They looked like two pieces of stone, highly polished and inscrutable. "If you could give me freedom, would you?"

He stared at her for a moment; his heart caught in his throat. The question was sad and half-hearted, a plea more than anything else. "Yes," he whispered.

It was the only thing he couldn't give her.

.

Fugaku would be back from his mission in a matter of days. They would have to go back to how they had been, and would possibly never be again what they were meant to be.

Minato was saddened, Mikoto feeling as though the walls were closing in on her again.

.

"Mikoto, come back!" Minato called desperately. "You'll catch your death out there!"

Mikoto continued to wade into the Nakano river, the swirling waters reaching her waist. Her eyes were slightly wild, huge in her pale face. "Come out here and bring me back then!"

Sighing and shaking his head in bewilderment, Minato took off his shoes and waded out into the river. The water was icy cold, and Minato's face paled in shock when it hit his skin. How she was standing out there without shivering convulsively he had no idea.

Minato stood barely a foot away from her. "Now will you please come back?" he pleaded with her.

Mikoto smiled over-brightly, her lips trembling as she did so. Abruptly, she reached up and put a hand on the back of his neck, kissing him.

It was at that point that they lost their balance and fell into the water.

When Minato resurfaced, he pushed his soaked bangs out of his face, spluttering. Mikoto was treading water a foot away from him. Her hair was plastered to her face, her clothes soaked against her skin. Her eyes were crinkled upwards in enjoyment. She had never looked more beautiful than when she was laughing at him.

Minato put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her again.

.

The kitchen was quiet. Itachi was in one of the other rooms, taking a nap, and Mikoto milled aimlessly around the kitchen, listlessly searching for something to do.

She dreaded the moment when Fugaku would return and her life would return to normal. It would be just as it had ever been, just as routine and dull, constricting and restraining. The door of her gilded cage was closing again.

"Mikoto." She gasped to hear a whisper. Turning around, Mikoto saw Minato clambering through the kitchen window, sliding fluidly past the sink to stand barely a foot away.

"Minato." She gaped, horrified. "You shouldn't be here. Fugaku will be back any moment, and what do you think he will say if—"

He held up a hand. "I know, I know. I just came to bring you these." He held out a bunch of scarlet tulips, maybe eight or nine in total. Minato rubbed the nape of his neck in embarrassment. "The ends aren't even, I know, but—"

Mikoto cut him off, putting a finger to his lips. "They're perfect." She put the tulips in a vase on the kitchen table, and turned back to Minato.

Smiling wistfully, Mikoto brushed her hand against his cheek, breathing hard. "Minato…"

The front door slammed.

Mikoto whirled around, her heart pounding out of control, her eyes as round as coins.

"Mikoto!" she heard Fugaku call from the front of the house.

She turned around, expecting to see Minato still standing there, but the kitchen was empty, the curtains of the kitchen window fluttering in the breeze.


End file.
